News, Would you send your parents to a India nursing home? (child, father)

[John1960]

Man turns to India for cheap care for parents.

PONDICHERRY, INDIA — After three years of caring for his increasingly frail mother and father in their Florida retirement home, Steve Herzfeld was exhausted and faced with spending his family's last resources to put the couple in a cheap nursing home.

So he made what he saw as the only sensible decision: He outsourced his parents to India.

Today his mother, Frances, 89, who suffers from advanced Parkinson's disease, gets daily massages, physical therapy and 24-hour help getting to the bathroom, all for about $15 a day. His father, Ernest, 93, an Alzheimer's patient, has a full-time personal assistant, and a cook who has won him over to a vegetarian diet healthy enough that he no longer needs his cholesterol medication.

Best of all, the plentiful drugs the couple require cost less than 20 percent of what they do at home, and salaries for their six-person staff are so cheap that the pair now bank $1,000 a month of their $3,000 Social Security payment. They aim to use the savings as an emergency fund or to pay for airline tickets if family members want to visit.

STLtoday - News - NewsWatch (broken link)

[Shopaholic]

No way! My parents have given me so much and I want to be able to take good care of them.

[yellowsnow]

Sounds like they are getting better care there than they would here. Very few people here have the kind of money it would take for that level of care in the US. I'm thinking the care here would be 8 to 10 K per month.

The hard part would be isolation from friends and family. The alzheimers patient may not know the difference but the woman with parkinsons probably would.

[mrdude]

Originally Posted by yellowsnow

Sounds like they are getting better care there than they would here. Very few people here have the kind of money it would take for that level of care in the US. I'm thinking the care here would be 8 to 10 K per month.

agreed. my grandfather has been in a nursing home for the last couple of years, and it is quite a few grand every month at a nursing home where the service is very impersonal and minimal.

[lastra]

Normally I wouldn't do it, but if that is a last resort, and if I don't have money, then I would do it. For that type of care here, you have to spend a lot of money.

[VillageLife]

Of course not! I would never send them to a nursing home or even India!

[brokencrayola]

Stop for a second and imagine yourself being 80 or 90 and all of your children, grand-children and great-grandchildren are in the US and you are alone in India because it is cheaper to keep you there. Would that sound like fun to you?

[legally_tom]

Our firm works with victims of nursing home abuse, but even though we hear of the horrors of nursing home abuse across the United States and I can understanding the cost-incentive for sending a loved one overseas, I have a particular problem with avoiding problems. We should work for change here in America, not escape our nursing home problems by finding havens overseas.

Nursing home abuse lawyer - signs of nursing home abuse, nursing home neglect. Legal help from experienced attorney.

[purehighlander]

absolutely. I have worked in India and nursing care there is what it USED to be here. the physicians are trained in the US, for the most part. I would have surgery there if I needed it and had the money for the travel. the postop care and physical therapy is finer than in most hospitals in the US: and everyone there washes his and her hands; c dif is almost unheard of.

[mjindal]

I think Mr. Herzfeld did the right thing. My family is going through some tough decision-making with regard to my father, who is in a nursing home facility surviving on ventilation after his second stroke a few months ago. In the short time he has been there, he has been treated very badly at times. What is worse, is that his secondary insurance will not cover the care he needs there, so it will cost us our life savings - and put us in debt, too - to keep him there for even just a few months to get him really bad care at a 4-star rated facility. We have looked into all other alternatives to keep him here in the U.S. to be near us, and whatever is out there is very expensive, and as one of you said - impersonal and minimal at best. We are originally from India, and we have many doctors in the family, and I know that there is really good medical care in India if you know where to find it. If I am allowed to ask, where is this nursing home that Mr. Herzfeld has taken his parents? What is the name of the place? My mother and I have been talking, and we are really keen on the idea of taking my father to a good place in India, especially if the care will be truly 4-star quality and affordable.